This invention is directed to an apparatus for automatically loading cookies and the like into trays or other containers commonly used to package them and more specifically to an improved tray loader which is especially well suited to handle various cookie shapes including square or rectangular forms.
Present tray loader devices, such as the machine shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,290,859 issued Dec. 13, 1966, entitled "Tray Loader", have been extremely successful for tray loading round cookies but are not well suited in handling square or rectangular shapes. Herein, cookies such as cream filled sandwich types or the like are advanced to a loading station in parallel rows which have been separated into spaced groups of a given count for loading into an appropriate tray or box, the row spacing between cookies being fixed by conveyor and adjustment considerations. An aligned cookie group in each row is moved to a position over a related drop chute by a transfer conveyor while being supported on a pair of drop gate rails. The drop chutes are positioned and are of a suitable size to receive discrete cookie groups when the drop gate rails are activated. The cookies then fall downward through outlet openings in the bottom of the chutes and into a waiting box or tray with a complex guiding arrangement needed to direct cookies down into the trays. This guide arrangement requires retraction from interfering contact with the tray before the trays may be advanced. Since the spacing of the cookie rows moving along the transfer conveyor is greater than the desired spacing between cookie groups deposited in the boxes, the drop chutes are equipped with angled converging guide walls to urge the cookie groups together as they fall through the chutes for delivery into the trays at an appropriate spacing. These angled guide walls have, however, resulted in frequent chute "jam up" when the apparatus is required to load square cookies. Jamming, apart from interrupting production and wasting cookies, may also result in damage to the tray loading apparatus before the loading operation can be shut down.
Accordingly, a tray loading apparatus, which can accommodate various cookie shapes including square ones without damaging the cookies and without jamming, would be a decided advance in the state of the art.